Since Wednesday, Minnesotans have been flooding the streets of South Minneapolis where their neighbor was shot and killed during an ICE raid. They have spent early mornings and late nights at the Whipple Federal Building, where ICE agents deploy each morning and return each night. They have spent their midnight hours protesting outside of the hotels that house the ICE agents terrorizing their communities. As the work week came to a close, protests grew even larger.
We landed in Minneapolis on Friday night, arriving at the downtown hotel where ICE agents stay. Hundreds of people lined the streets all around the building, carting drum kits, noise makers, trumpets, whistles, and even fireworks to make as much noise as possible. The message was, quite literally, loud and clear: ICE agents terrorize Minneapolis, so Minneapolis will give them no peace. Even as temperatures dipped below freezing and snow started falling, our numbers only grew. Folks in nearby apartment buildings, bars, and restaurants came out to join the march. The noise created was so deafening, protestors passed out earplugs to one another. The fury of the crowd was aimed not only at the ICE agents who kidnap and kill their community members, but at the Trump administration who deployed them. ICE has been in Minneapolis for months, but two thousand additional agents were sent by Trump last week with special instructions to target the large Somali community of the Twin Cities.
Fed up, protestors brought signs reading “Trump is the real terrorist” and “Trump: end the war on immigrants!” One protestor, a school therapist, shared her reason for joining the march: “The children I work with are traumatized. They are traumatized by this administration and they are traumatized by the whole political system. We as school workers have an obligation not to be neutral in this situation. I will do everything in my power to bring about change for the students I work with.”
At 9:30, police ordered protestors to stop and disperse, declaring the protest an unlawful assembly. By 10pm, police had begun making arrests, ultimately detaining thirty protestors.
The next morning, in frigid five-degree weather, protestors rallied once again, trudging through heavy snow and across slick, icy sidewalks to convene at Powderhorn Park, just blocks from where Renee Nicole Good was killed. This same park was the site of countless protests, rallies, and community meetings during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests—George Floyd was murdered in the very same neighborhood five and a half years earlier. By the time we arrived at 1pm, thousands of people had gathered in the park and filled the surrounding streets. A contingent of teachers from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers marched together, carrying a banner which read, “Education not deportation.” One elementary school teacher spoke with Left Voice, saying, “I’m tired. I’m mad. I want them gone—I want ICE out of my city. I want my kids to feel safe again. Enough is enough, I have to be out here, I can’t stay silent.”
Another teacher working in a Title 1 school in South Minneapolis expressed that she was furious with the Trump administration, but also with Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey for his complicity: “I need people to understand that Mayor Frey is not on our side, he’s the reason that our neighbors live on the streets, he destroys encampments and defunds community resources. He has been doing only the bare minimum, there’s so much more he could be doing to protect our communities and protect our schools and he won’t do it.”
Also represented in the crowd were contingents from left groups across the city, including Socialist Alternative, with signs like “Abolish ICE, fund our schools” and “Democrats won’t save us.” The Twin Cities chapter of the Revolutionary Communists of America organized a contingent whose signs read “Minnesota AFL-CIO: Call a general strike!” Also showing out in huge numbers were the Democratic Socialists of America, the Sunrise Movement—a group that fights for climate justice and against authoritarianism, and the People’s Action Coalition Against Trump. Beyond the organizations present, thousands of individuals joined the march, bringing signs like “My parents fought for my rights, now I will fight for theirs,” and “Indigenous people for immigrant rights.” The march, from beginning to end, stretched nearly three miles, covering streets throughout South Minneapolis. City bus drivers, folks in cars driving by, and workers in local business waved and clapped, shouting their support and calling out, “Fuck ICE.”
As we write, protestors continue to fill the Minneapolis streets, both at Powderhorn Park and at the Whipple Federal Building.
The last two days in Minneapolis have seen huge showings of fury against ICE and the Trump administration and solidarity with immigrants in the U.S. As ICE continues to reign terror on cities across the nation, this movement must massify, connecting the struggle against ICE at home with the struggle against imperialist intervention in Venezuela abroad.
Minneapolis has been the eye of the storm before, inspiring one of the largest social movements in history in 2020–we must continue to organize together to create a fighting movement once again, both in the Twin Cities and beyond.
The post No Peace for ICE: Minneapolis Protests Trump’s War on Immigrants and Repression appeared first on Left Voice.
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